Marijuana dispensary to be built in Sauget IL

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SAUGET, IL (KTVI) - Medical marijuana is set to go on sale in Sauget, Illinois as early as this summer. A medical marijuana dispensary will be built right next door to the stadium where the Gateway Grizzlies play baseball.

Michael Cordes works with The Green Solution. The Belleville resident has been working with his daughter Tanya Griffin for month to receive a state permit to open a dispensary. Cordes said, “It’s all about medicine, all about medicine.” His daughter is vice-president of the company.

To use medical marijuana patients have to be diagnosed with one of 41 chronic diseases like cancer, epilepsy or AIDS. Cordes said, “You have to go thru an astringent process to make sure you’re qualified.”

It’s probably easier to get a prescription for narcotics than weed. Just to enter the dispensary patients have to jump through many hoops, they need permission from their doctors as well as a card from the state health department and they have to give their fingerprints.

The idea of selling pot for illnesses has some local residents worried. Nathan McDonald said, “It might be bad it might be bad. Madden: Why? Because they’re going to abuse the pills and marijuana everybody’s going to need it.”

The Burkhead family of Maryville, Illinois believes the dispensary could help 3-year-old Mira Burkhead. The youngster has epilepsy and suffers constant seizures. An oil in the marijuana could calm those seizures.

Stories like Mira’s change people’s minds about the sale of weed not from their homes. Dan Nicholson said, “Yeah in that case I would be, to help people out like that.” Cordes added, “A number of people have testified how it’s helped their family and a number of people have left the state to go get it in Colorado and places like that.” He said so far 1000 people have received their card from the state health department.